There are many critical perceptual limitations to humans piloting aircraft or other vehicles as well as doctors and medical technicians implementing procedures on patients, or operators trying to construct or repair or diagnose equipment or structures, or emergency personnel attempting to rescue people or alleviate a dangerous situation. To overcome many of these perceptual limitations immersion as well as augmented reality has been developed to provide necessary and relevant information outside the immediate local perception of the user that is used to optimize the abilities of the user or users well beyond their natural local perception.
With the advent of advanced simulation technology, the augmentation of dynamic three-dimensional surfaces onto a see-through display has become more and more feasible, combined with the ability to track the orientation of an operators head, hand(s), body, and eyes and of objects in a system. Known orientations of mounted see-through displays and data from sensors indicating the states of objects have also been developed. The knowledge base of three-dimensional surfaces can be given the added benefit of augmentation as well as providing the ability to reasonably predict relative probabilities of collisions enabling a user to optimize the user's efforts. Such capabilities allows a user to not only have the visible world augmented, but also in conditions where the visibility is poor due to weather, night, or occlusion by structures can allow the user to have an augmented telepresence as well as a physical presence.
For pilots of aircraft, many of these limitations include occlusion by aircraft structures that keep the pilot from seeing weather conditions, icing on wings and control structures, conditions of aircraft structures, terrain, buildings, or lack of adequate day-light, as well as not knowing the flight plan, position, speed, and direction of other known aircraft, or the position, speed, and direction of unknown aircraft, structures, or flocks of birds received from radar or other sensor data.